64 Fellow-feeling as 



mains that the only true solution of our political 

 and social problems lies in cultivating everywhere 

 the spirit of brotherhood, of fellow-feeling and un 

 derstanding between man and man, and the willing 

 ness to treat a man as a man, which are the es 

 sential factors in American democracy as we still 

 see it in the country districts. 



The chief factor in producing such sympathy is 

 simply association on a plane of equality, and for a 

 common object. Any healthy-minded American is 

 bound to think well of his fellow-Americans if he 

 only gets to know them. The trouble is that he does 

 not know them. If the banker and the farmer never 

 meet, or meet only in the most perfunctory business 

 way, if the banking is not done by men whom the 

 farmer knows as his friends and associates, a spirit 

 of mistrust is almost sure to spring up. If the mer 

 chant or the manufacturer, the lawyer or the clerk, 

 never meets the mechanic or the handicraftsman, 

 save on rare occasions, when the meeting may be of a 

 hostile kind, each side feels that the other is alien 

 and naturally antagonistic. But if any one individual 

 of any group were to be thrown into natural associa 

 tion with another group, the difficulties would be 

 found to disappear so far as he was concerned. 

 Very possibly he would become the ardent champion 

 of the other group. 



Perhaps I may be pardoned for quoting my own 



